"I have come back to talk to you," she began, in her sweet voice with its occasional quick lift of appeal. "I knew that, in Mr. Truscomb's absence, it would be hard for you to leave the mills, and there are one or two things I want you to explain before I go away—some of the things, for instance, that you spoke to Mr. Tredegar about last night."
Amherst's feeling of constraint returned. "I'm afraid I expressed myself badly; I may have annoyed him—" he began.
She smiled this away, as though irrelevant to the main issue. "Perhaps you don't quite understand each other—but I am sure you can make it clear to me." She sank into the chair, resting one arm on the edge of the desk behind which he had resumed his place. "That is the reason why I came alone," she continued. "I never can understand when a lot of people are trying to tell me a thing all at once. And I don't suppose I care as much as a man would—a lawyer especially—about the forms that ought to be observed. All I want is to find out what is wrong and how to remedy it."
Her blue eyes met Amherst's in a look that flowed like warmth about his heart. How should he have doubted that her feelings were as exquisite as her means of expressing them? The iron bands of distrust were loosened from his spirit, and he blushed for his cheap scepticism of the morning. In a woman so evidently nurtured in dependence, whose views had been formed, and her actions directed, by the most conventional influences, the mere fact of coming alone to Westmore, in open defiance of her advisers, bespoke a persistence of purpose that put his doubts to shame.
"It will make a great difference to the people here if you interest yourself in them," he rejoined. "I tried to explain to Mr. Tredegar that I had no wish to criticise the business management of the mills—even if there had been any excuse for my doing so—but that I was sure the condition of the operatives could be very much improved, without permanent harm to the business, by any one who felt a personal sympathy for them; and in the end I believe such sympathy produces better work, and so benefits the employer materially."
She listened with her gentle look of trust, as though committing to him, with the good faith of a child, her ignorance, her credulity, her little rudimentary convictions and her little tentative aspirations, relying on him not to abuse or misdirect them in the boundless supremacy of his masculine understanding.
"That is just what I want you to explain to me," she said. "But first I should like to know more about the poor man who was hurt. I meant to see his wife yesterday, but Mr. Gaines told me she would be at work till six, and it would have been difficult to go after that. I did go to the hospital; but the man was sleeping—is Dillon his name?—and the matron told us he was much better. Dr. Disbrow came in the evening and said the same thing—told us it was all a false report about his having been so badly hurt, and that Mr. Truscomb was very much annoyed when he heard of your having said, before the operatives, that Dillon would lose his arm."
Amherst smiled. "Ah—Mr. Truscomb heard that? Well, he's right to be annoyed: I ought not to have said it when I did. But unfortunately I am not the only one to be punished. The operative who tied on the black cloth was dismissed this morning."
Mrs. Westmore flamed up. "Dismissed for that? Oh, how unjust—how cruel!"
"You must look at both sides of the case," said Amherst, finding it much easier to remain temperate in the glow he had kindled than if he had had to force his own heat into frozen veins. "Of course any act of insubordination must be reprimanded—but I think a reprimand would have been enough."